The “preventable incident” endangered scores of lives both on the plane itself and others flying Max 9 aircraft, the suit alleges.

Three passengers are suing Boeing and Alaska Airlines for $1 billion in damages in the wake of a door panel blowing out midair on their flight.

The suit, announced Feb. 23, accuses Boeing and Alaska Airlines of negligence for allegedly having ignored warning signs that could have prevented the Jan. 5 incident, which forced the plane pilots to make an emergency landing.

“This experience jeopardized the lives of the 174 passengers and six crew members that were on board,” a release announcing the suit states. “For those reasons, the lawsuit seeks substantial punitive damages … for what was a preventable incident.”

  • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Man, these are the people who define excessive litigation. I understand they are asking for way more than they want to actually receive. I think a million dollars per passenger would be excessive (but I’m not against an airline company be taught a lesson), a million dollars divided amongst all the passengers and crew, along with reimbursement for any travels delays etc would be more than I expect they’ll get, but asking for a billion to be split 3 ways is lunacy, and probably only there to get clicks on links now that I think about it. I’m just contributing to their goal…

    • Cort@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      A million dollars would only represent .01% of the 10 billion profit they made last year. That’s not even a slap on the wrist. If a preventable malfunction puts 100+ customers lives at risk, the penalty should be WAY higher.

      • HappycamperNZ@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        $1 billion - 10%.

        Yeah, should be higher looking at that content, but if you want to punish the airline the value shouldn’t go to the passengers.

    • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      100-200 million is going to do nothing to dissuade Boeing from continuing to race to the bottom with their QC, there have been multiple recent years they bought back stock at 4, 5, 6 billion per year. It’s not just about restitution to the victims, it’s also about using fines to fix the systemic problems to keep it from happening again.